And we’ll drive up north, all day and all night
Watch the moon rise over the Pacific on our right
You’ll make me laugh aloud, and I’ll do the same
And I’ll fall in love before I know your name
Don Walker Young Girls 2013
All great singers sound like they’re telling the truth. Jerry Lee Lewis said that. It’s a line that fits Don Walker. Listen to his new album Hully Gully and you’ll understand. It’s in the way Don leans into the microphone to deliver the finest set of lyrics you’re likely to hear this year. In 2014 Walker’s voice remains rich, intimate and conversational.
On Hully Gully Don Walker continues to punch as a heavy weight songwriter. His back catalogue is embedded in the Australian psyche and includes Cold Chisel classics such as ‘Flame Trees’, ‘Cheap Wine’, ‘Standing On The Outside’, ‘Khe Sahn’ and ‘Letter To Alan’. Everyone from Slim Dusty to Sara Blasko has covered Walker’s songs or adored the merit of his solo project, Catfish, or his time with Tex, Don & Charlie.
Hully Gully, his third solo album, sits alongside Walker’s best work, and, comes at you with a rockabilly sensibility and twisted blues vernacular: the songs, enhanced by Walker’s keen eye for portraiture, are played with a jazz attitude.
Hully Gully is dotted with pictures of contemporary life: relationships, townships, politics, occasional darkness, personal reflection and a curiosity about the glue that binds the fabric together. Walker baulks at any suggestion that he’s created a concept album but accepts there’s a thematic thread that runs through the song lines.
“For most of my life I’ve thought if you just go with the songs that are great and say something and don’t worry to much about they interlock with each other, you will finish up with something that has a thread in retrospect,” Walker admits.
Don wrote Hully Gully over a ten-year period and cut it in studios in Sydney and Melbourne, primarily, with his band The Suave Fucks. Between penning an acclaimed memoir, Shots, and recording and touring with Cold Chisel, Walker filed away these finely crafted tunes and worked on creating an album that’s fits together like a slim volume of pitch-perfect short stories.
“It’s the way I did the previous record Cutting Back [2006],” continues Walker. “It’s an accumulation of songs over ten years that reaches a certain point where they seem to add up to something. Up until that point you might have a lot of stuff, but somehow it doesn’t ‘add up to something’. That point was reached last October where we put down four new songs in Sydney and suddenly it all just seemed to make sense together with the songs I had from previous years.”
Maybe it’s the cigars and the fact he starts his day with a newspaper, but there’s something distinctly old school about Don Walker. It’s reflected in how he approaches his time in the studio. On Hully Gully Walker cut the album like Sinatra used to do it, live, in a big room, and straight to 24-track-tape with minimal overdubs. Joe Henry (Solomon Burke/Bonnie Raitt/Allen Toussaint) mixed the material with Walker by his side in Pasadena, while Bleddyn Butcher shot the album’s cover portrait on an old-style film camera.
“All of these songs were recorded on the back of doing live shows,” recalls Walker. “We learn the material at rehearsal or sound checks. We play them for a year or two before they’re recorded and then one day I turn around and notice there are five or six unrecorded songs in the set. We book a day in the studio at the end of a tour and record.”
“The Suave Fucks are a really gun band. A lot of things that you would adjust on a song in the studio: we do that. We keep it sharp: the songs are brought up to an optimum. We operate like a jazz band. A jazz band records an album in a day but it’s really the result of wood shedding over the previous two years and developing the ideas live.”
Listening to Hully Gully, it’s hard to pick favourites. The title track is thrilling. ‘Young Girls’ swings like the proverbial gate. ‘Mongrelwise’, another highlight, has a Latin-feel, ‘Everybody’ was recorded by Cold Chisel for No Plans in 2012. Here Walker brings the tune back home. ‘Pool’, is a timeless Walker vignette where the author meditates on the minutia of life while offering a subtle nod to Creedence Clearwater Revival. The song is later reprised as ‘Pool Major’ and closes the album.
The album is littered with near perfect moments where Walker’s voice meets the music and the lyrics play out like a Spartan film noir. As Hully Gully closes it’s Walker alone, at the piano, and musing on the weather.
The final song fades and you’ve spent fifty minutes in the company of a modern classic and are reminded, again, that Jerry Lee Lewis was right. All great singers sound like they’re telling the truth. Welcome back Don Walker.
The Suave Fucks are: Glen Hannah, Roy Payne, Garrett Costigan, Michael Vidale and Hamish Stuart
Hully Gully is out now though MGM Records.
DON WALKER – THE PERFECT CRIME TOUR, OCTOBER \ NOVEMBER 2013
Don Walker will perform all dates with The Suave Fucks except where noted
FRI 24 OCT | KIDGEERIDGE MUSIC FESTIVAL, ULLADULLA NSW
Tickets available from Essence of Milton (02 4455 7155), Shoalhaven Hotwater (02 4423 1534) or call 02 4456 4599
SAT 25 OCT | CAMELOT LOUNGE, SYDNEY NSW
Tickets available from www.camelotlounge.com
SUN 26 OCT | LIZOTTES, NEWCASTLE NSW
Tickets available from www.lizottes.com.au | 02 4956 2066 | From the venue direct
WED 29 OCT | MELBOURNE FOLK CLUB @ BELLA UNION, MELBOURNE VIC
Don Walker Solo with Roy Payne & special guests
Tickets available from www.themelbournefolkclub.com
THU 30 OCT | SPIRIT BAR, TRARALGON VIC
Tickets available from www.oztix.com.au | 1300 762 545 | All Oztix outlets & venue direct
FRI 31 OCT | THEATRE ROYAL, CASTLEMAINE VIC
Tickets available from www.theroyalc.com.au | 03 5472 1196
SAT 01 NOV | THE CARAVAN CLUB, OAKLEIGH VIC
Tickets available from www.caravanmusic.com.au | 03 9568 1432
THU 06 NOV | THE SOUNDLOUNGE, GOLD COAST QLD
Tickets available from www.soundlounge.com.au
FRI 07 NOV | THE SPOTTED COW, TOOWOOMBA QLD
Tickets available from www.oztix.com.au | 1300 762 545 | All Oztix Outlets
Hully Gully is available everywhere through MGM.
